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The core of ecorisQ is made of its members. By joining ecorisQ you will expand your professional network and profit from transparent tools in the field of natural hazard risks. Being an ecorisQ member demonstrates that you are willing to increase the transparancy and reproducibility of natural hazard analyses and that you promote sustainable protection against natural hazards.

Firstly, we wish you all the best for the year 2020. As every year, you will need to install a new licence file to make sure your ecorisQ tools are operational in 2020. The licence files for 2020 are now online in the “tools” menu (only accessible after login).

In 2019, we developed 64-bit windows versions for Rockyfor3D and SOSlope, so that larger datasets can be treated more efficiently by the software. As a result, you’ll need to install licence files for these 64-bit versions. The other ecorisQ tools will be transformed in 64-bit versions in the coming year. For now, they are stil available in 32-bit versions and for these, a 32-bit licence file is required.

Secondly, from 13 - 19 June 2020, we organise our seventh general assembly parallel to the 5th International Conference on Soil, Bio- and Eco-Engineering at the Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH-HAFL in Zollikofen (15 min. from the centre of Bern, Switzerland). The preliminary programme and call for abstract submission can be found here. Training courses on Rockyfor3D and SOSlope will be organised in the frame of this conference.

Lastly, an additional training course on Rockyfor3D will be organised in Bergen (Norway) on the 15th of May 2020, directly after the Interpraevent 2020 congress. Detailed information on this training course will follow in March 2020.

EcorisQ organizes a SOSlope training course in the USA at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, on the 7th of December 2019. In this course we will present an updated version of SOSlope and will use case studies to illustrate the use of the software for modeling shallow landslide hazards and for quantitative evaluation of soil bio-engineering measures. The participation is cost-free and limited to a total of 25 participants. The program can be found here. An additional course will be orgsanized on the 8th of December if there is a high demand. For registration please write an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Last thursday, the 26th of September 2019, the Working Party on the Management of Mountain Watersheds (WPMMW), a technical body under the umbrella of the European Forestry Commission (EFC), established in 1950, met in Innsbruck to discuss "Protective Functions of Forests in a Changing Climate". The meeting was organised by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism, the Province of Tyrol and FAO. The program of the meeting can be found here. The main take home messages were:

Forests reduce natural hazard risks, they do not provide 100% protection (the same accounts for human made structural measures)

Forests should be an integral part of risk management strategies

Legal frameworks for implementing protection forests are largely available / in force - it just has to be done and not only in the Alps

Major challenges for protection forests are:

regeneration of forests (ensuring establishment and growth of young trees that overtake the proecrive role of older ones in the future)

As the seasons change so too it appears does the incidence of storms, landslides and floods that all too often accompany fall and spring weather.

September saw many events across the globe of landslides taking the lives of people from Wales, Uganda, Philippines and more. Similarly floods accompanying hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and tropical storms battered coastal communities causing millions of dollars in damage in Mexico, the US and elsewhere with loss of life. Earthquakes were also not far from the news causing damage in Sulawesi in Indonesia in October and causing severe landslides in Palu. Mallorca in Spain felt the impacts of a very large flash flood and violent storms have lashed France in recent days. You can see more on Dave Petley’s Landslide Blog.

Whatever the reason, climate change or just natural variation in the weather, natural hazards are here to stay, and will continue to disrupt the lives of people around the globe. The work of ecorisQ and its members as well as those in similar organisations becomes ever more important as society aims to understand, respond to, or manage these many natural hazards.

What is ecorisQ about

ecorisQ promotes sustainable, where possible nature-based, solutions for natural hazard risk reduction by bringing together science and practice for the development and dissemination of transparent tools for natural hazard and risk analyses.